How do you tell a partner that you’re not comfortable with something they want to do, whether you have sexual abuse in your history or not? You tell them you’re not comfortable with something they want to do.

How do you get out of an abusive situation and get yourself safe? By doing all you can to get sound help as soon as you can and to leave as safely as possible. It’s so easy to feel stuck in abuse or other unsafe situations, but we can get unstuck.

Do you have to worry that simply by virtue of being a male person with a sexuality, you’ll abuse someone? No. Being a certain sex, having a certain gender or having a sexuality does not mean a person has any kind of innate predilection to abuse.

Last week, it came to light that a prominent Wisconsin prosecutor was at the center of a sexual harassment scandal. A domestic violence victim said that District Attorney Ken Kratz made personal advances towards her through inappropriate text messages. Police documents show dozens of messages that were sent last year while Kratz was prosecuting the woman’s ex-boyfriend’s case.

Several complex and interconnected social and cultural factors have kept women particularly vulnerable to violence directed against them, all of them manifestations of unequal power relations between men and women. The acceptance of violence as a means by which to solve conflict as well as fear of and control over female independence and female sexuality are just some of the contributing factors that allow violence against women to persist. How are the public health and medical communities implicated in all of this? What can they do to address violence against women not just as a legal issue, but as a fundamental human rights health issue that requires medical attention, clinical care, and sustainable public health interventions?